Tag: pictures

August 31, 2011 Privacy

Sexy MySpace photos stay out of evidence

Webb v. Jessamine County Fiscal Court, 2011 WL 3652751 (E.D. Ky. August 19, 2011)

Plaintiff filed a civil rights lawsuit against the local jail and other governmnet officials after she gave birth while incarcerated. She claimed, among other things, that the jail’s failure to get her proper medical care before and during the delivery caused her extreme humiliation, mental anguish and emotional distress.

The defendants tried an extremely bizarre and highly questionable tactic — they sought to use provocative photos purportedly copied from plaintiff’s MySpace profile, to demonatrate that it is “less probable that [plaintiff] would experience humiliation and mental anguish by being in a jail cell while delivering a baby.” Defendants claimed that the photos were “of such a nature that a reasonable person would be embarrassed if such photographs were placed in public view.”

In other words, defendants argued that because plaintiff would post photos like that of herself online, she did not have the dignity to be free from being ignored or called a child and a liar during labor.

The court granted plaintiff’s motion in limine, excluding the photos from evidence. It found that the photos were irrelevant:

Although the appearance of provocative photos online may cause some humiliation, it bears no relation at all to the extreme humiliation and mental anguish a woman forced to go through labor on her own in a jail cell would bring.

The court also found that the defendants had not properly authenticated the photos, i.e., had not provided enough supporting evidence to show that they actually were of plaintiff. The photos that the defendants offered bore “no indicia of authenticity, such as a web address or a photo of these images on the public MySpace account from which Defendants claim they originated.”

November 5, 2009 Miscellaneous, Privacy

Death scene photos posted on the web did not subject coroner to liability

Werner v. County of Northampton, 2009 WL 3471188 (3rd Cir. October 29, 2009) (Not selected for official publication).

Plaintiff’s son died in the family home. No one seems to know for sure whether it was an accident or suicide. Even Plaintiff gave conflicting statements to the court — in his complaint he said it was not suicide, but in a later-filed brief he said it was.

Do not cross this line and I mean it.

In any event, on the day the son died, the coroner came to the house to take pictures. Somehow the coroner’s son got a hold of the photos and posted them on the web with a caption “There is no better way to kill yourself.”

Plaintiff sued the coroner under 28 U.S.C. 1983 which, among other things, gives citizens a cause of action when their rights are violated by someone acting under the law. Plaintiff claimed the coroner committed a due process violation of Plaintiff’s liberty interests in his reputation by allowing the photos to be posted.

To succeed on his liberty interest claim, Plaintiff was required to satisfy the “stigma plus” test. The district court dismissed the complaint, finding Plaintiff’s allegations did not meet this standard.

A statement that is “stigmatizing” under this test must be (1) made publicly, and (2) false. In this cause, the court found that the death scene photos were the relevant statement. But there were no allegations in the complaint that the photos themselves were “false.” (What the court was probably saying here is that the photos had not been Photoshopped or otherwise changed in a way to make them not accurately portray the scene.)

The court made a fine distinction in the process of dismissing the case. In response to the motion to dismiss, Plaintiff argued that the thrust of his argument was that the website falsely suggested his son committed suicide. But the court found otherwise, carefully looking at the allegations of the complaint which, for example, said that the photos “fueled the false impression that the Plaintiff’s son committed suicide.”

There were no allegations that the photos themselves were the false statements. But what about the caption, “[t]here is no better way to kill yourself,” you ask? Though the opinion does not address this point, one is left to conclude that that language could not be attributed to the defendant coroner, since it was his son that posted the photos, and not himself.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Fabio Beretta under this Creative Commons license.

October 16, 2009 Evidence

Web photos inadmissible as evidence in case against deer hunter

State v. Ness, — N.W.2d —-, 2009 WL 3296676 (N.D. Oct. 15, 2009)

Another day, another state supreme court decision about whether web-found evidence is admissible. Yesterday our discussion was about a MySpace posting in a murder trial. (The evidence in that case was admissible.) Today it’s about pictures from the Internet in a case against a hunter accused of failing to tag the deer he had shot. (The evidence in this case was inadmissible.)

Defendant Ness was charged with violating a proclamation of the governor of North Dakota (which has the force of law) requiring hunters to “immediately” place a state-issued tag on all deer killed. At trial, his attorney cross examined the game warden who issued the citation to Ness while Ness was cutting the deer up in his front yard. In connection with this cross examination, Ness’s lawyer tried to introduce photos from the web of other hunters, to shed light on what the word “immediately” meant.

The trial court excluded the photos of other hunters. Ness was found guilty and sought review with the North Dakota Supreme Court. On appeal, the court agreed that the photos were properly excluded.

Ness argued that keeping the photos away from the jury during the game warden’s cross examination violated his constitutional right to confront his accuser. The Supreme Court rejected that argument, however, finding that the pictures of other hunters with other animals at other times were irrelevant to the present matter and would not help the jury determine whether the law was broken in this case.

Deer photo courtesy Flickr user law_keven under this Creative Commons license.

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